Baked pasta casseroles with vegetables

If you love baked pasta casseroles but

Only the brown crispy top layer, well, you can have a dinner that is only the top layer.

This vegetable-heavy sheet-pan pasta dinner is a

Riff on a recipe my wife lauren has been making which is, in turn, a riff on a new york times recipe, and please don't consider it a recipe.

It's just a technique. Just use whatever ingredients you have and flavors you like. Get a little pot of water coming to a boil for the pasta. Big pinch of salt in there. The first thing I'm gonna make a the seasoned breadcrumb topping. I'll zest this lemon. You could even do two lemons.

We're gonna use the juice at the end. Then I'll grate some cheese — this is pecorino. Don't ask me how much — it's ust a pile. Knock all that sticky lemon zest out of there. I'll pick some fresh thyme leaves, but any fresh herb would be fine. Then I've got one red chili — slice thin and I'll stop when I get to the top where most of the seeds and heat live. A couple cloves of garlic — cut off the root ends, smash to release the skin and peel. Then.

I'll just chop all of these things into each other. It absolutely could be placebo effect, but I could swear that aromatic ingredients create new and better aromatic compounds when you chop them into each other like this. Regardless, it all needs to be chopped up fine so you might as well do it in one big mess. In a bowl with you, and then I will mix in a roughly equal quantity of panko bread crumbs. Any kind of breadcrumb is fine, but panko is basically always better. It's rispier. Get that really well blended. There's our topping.

Next I'll grate up half a pound, 226g of low-moisture mozzarella cheese, though honestly I think fresh mozzarella would also work here. Throw that in a bowl — we won't need it until the end. Here's a pound, 454g of Brussels spouts. For each one, I will cut off the stem end and then I'm going to quarter them. You could get away with halves if they're small. Any decayed outer leaves should just fall off in the process of cutting. I love roasted Brussels sprouts but you could use any vegetable that roasts well, as long as you can cut it into pretty small pieces. Cauliflower would be dynamite.

I think the Times uses broccoli. I'm not wild about roasted broccoli, but you do you, NYT. Here's my sheet pan.

Onto that I will spread like four

Ounces, 113g of thickly diced pancetta.

You could use any fatty cured meat as along as it's in reasonably big chunks. Sausage would be great. You could skip the meat entirely or use 2-3x as much. I'm just throwing it into a cold oven.

I will turn on the broiler/grill and let the meat heat up slowly. Meanwhile I can mow through my second 1-pound bag of Brussels sprouts. I'm using two pounds of sprouts and half a pound, half a box of pasta. That's gonna get me a really healthy, vegetable-heavy meal. But you could use just like one pound of sprouts and the whole box of pasta and you'd get more traditional proportions. And now is probably a good time for me to drop my pasta. Anyway, fat melts at a relatively low temperature, so starting the pancetta in a cold oven gave the fat lots of time to render out before the meat started to cook and brown under that broiler. It looks mostly done, which is good. The meat won't really be able to get much crispier once we mix in two pounds of Brussels sprouts. I've got a couple carrots I can throw in there too.

If I slice them thin, they should cook in about the same time as the sprouts. Carrots on the pile — enough salt to basically season all of that veg. All the other elements of this dish come with their own salt. I'm just tossing everything in salt and rendered fat, of which there is plenty. I'm not burning myself — all this mass has sucked all the heat out — but you can use a spatula or something to be safe.

And if you're not using meat, just

Toss all this in olive oil.

Get everything to an even layer so

It cooks evenly and back under the broiler it goes.

The package says to boil this pasta for 13 minutes.

I've had it boiling about 10 minutes, so I'm gonna stop now and drain. It's gonna soften some more as it sits around and it'll soften even more in the oven later. I've got a couple shallots that I'm gonna peel and dice fine. If I was using a full-sized onion I would have put that in with the sprouts, but shallot layers are thinner so they're gonna cook faster. Sprouts look maybe halfway done — it's been maybe five minutes. Now I'll throw on the shallots. Oh, and I also wanted a little handful of whole fennel seeds, though honestly any spice would be fine. Just maybe put it in halfway through the cooking so it doesn't burn.

Toss toss toss, get everything coated in pancetta fat, and back under the broiler. Now I can clean up a little. And oh, give that drained pasta a shake every now and then, otherwise all the pieces will glue together. OK, veg looks almost done. I am gonna turn my broiler off right now, because if you leave it on for too long it can trip a breaker designed to keep the element from overheating and melting down onto your food. About a third of my grated mozzarella goes on, followed by all of my pasta and now I'll toss. The purpose of this dose of cheese is to hold all the pieces together in a little melty matrix. Level that off smooth.

Then I'm gonna drop in a half-pound, 223g tub of ricotta cheese in dollops. This offers some nice, creamy heterogeneity and the tops of the dollops brown really nice under the broiler. Nestle them in there. I say use the full-fat ricotta, otherwise it just tastes like nothing. My remaining mozzarella I'll scatter on top, avoiding the ricotta dollops because I want those to be able to brown. Same deal with my seasoned breadcrumb topping — get it everywhere except on the ricotta. Man that topping smells really good. Now just drizzle everything with olive oil.

Olive oil tastes great and will enhance browning. Throw it under and watch it carefully. It'll only need a few minutes before things start to burn. If you don't have a broiler — a super-hot top element — I'd say just crank your oven as hot as it'll go. It'll take more time and electricity, and the browning won't be quite as nice, but you'll still get an excellent dinner. It really is like the top layer of the casserole fired the bottom layer and went solo. Squeeze on the juice from that lemon. That is key, in my opinion.

I might even like two lemons for this much food — enough for four people, at least. I suppose you could cut it into sections and slide them onto plates, but I say everybody just gathers around the pan with forks. The pan will keep everything hot. Thin food goes cold fast. Look at the browning on that piece of cascatelli — you don't even notice you're eating mostly vegetables. Nice...